by Terry Brooks
He sighed, and the whistling died away. Yes, he knew them all, but they paid little attention to him now. If he caught someone’s eye, he might get a solemn nod or a desultory wave. One or two might stop to speak to him. That was about the extent of it. Mostly, they avoided him. Whatever was wrong with him, they didn’t want it rubbing off on them.
He wondered one more time why they couldn’t just accept what he’d done and let it go at that.
He stared down momentarily at the carving. A dog running, swift and strong, legs extended, ears flattened, head up. He would give this one to his grandson Arken, his oldest girl’s boy. He gave most of his carvings away, though he could have sold them had he chosen to do so. But money wasn’t something he needed; he had plenty of that and could get more if it became necessary. What he needed was peace of mind and a sense of purpose. Sad to say, even two years later, he was having trouble finding both.
He glanced over his shoulder momentarily at the building behind him, a dark, silent presence amid the cacophony of the city. In the growing twilight, it cast its squarish shadow over him. The great doors that led to its interior were closed tonight—he hadn’t bothered to open them. Sometimes he did, just because it made him feel more at home, more a part of his work. But lately it had depressed him to sit there with the doors open and the interior dark and silent, nothing happening after all those years of constant heat and noise and activity. Besides, it only drew the curiosity seekers, suggesting to them the possibility of things that would never happen.
He stirred the wood shavings with the toe of his boot. Better to let the past stay closed away, where it belonged.
Darkness fell, and he rose to light the torches that bracketed the building’s smaller side entry. These would cast the light he needed to continue his work. He should go home, he knew. Mina would be looking for him. But there was a restlessness about him that kept his hands moving and his thoughts adrift in the swell of the night sounds that rose with the coming of the dark. He could pick those sounds out, all of them, could separate them as surely as the shavings piled at his feet. He knew them all so well—as he knew this city and its people. His knowledge comforted him. Dechtera was not a city for everyone. It was special and unique and it spoke with a language of its own. Either you understood what it was saying or you didn’t. Either you were intrigued by what you heard or you moved on.
Lately, for the first time in his life, he was thinking that perhaps he had heard about as much of the city’s language as he cared to.
He was contemplating what that meant, his carving momentarily forgotten, when the three strangers approached. He didn’t see them at first, cloaked and hooded in the darkness, just a part of the crowd that passed on the street before him. But then they separated themselves from its flow and came toward him, and there was no mistaking their intent. He was immediately curious—it was unusual for anyone to approach him these days. The hoods bothered him a little; it was awfully hot to be wrapped up so. Were they hiding from something?
He rose to meet them, a big, rawboned man with heavy arms, a deep chest, and wide, blocky hands. His face was surprisingly smooth for a man his age, brown from the sun and strong-featured, his broad chin thinly bearded, the black hair on his head rapidly receding from his crown toward his ears and neck. He set the knife and carving on the bench behind him and stood waiting with his hands on his hips. As the trio slowed before him, the tallest pulled back his hood to reveal himself. Urprox Screl nodded in recognition. It was the fellow who had visited with him yesterday, the Borderman, come down out of Varfleet, a quiet, intense man with a good deal more on his mind than he was giving out. He had purchased a blade from one of the shopkeepers and come to compliment Urprox on his workmanship. Ostensibly. It felt as if there might be something more to the visit than just that. The Borderman had said he would be back.
“Good as your word, I see,” Urprox greeted, reminded now of the other’s promise and wanting to take matters in hand early—his city, his home, his rules.
“Kinson Ravenlock,” the Borderman reminded him.
Urprox Screl nodded. “I remember.”
“These are friends who want to meet you.” The hoods came back. A girl and an old man. They faced him squarely, but kept their backs to the crowd of passersby. “I wonder if we might speak with you for a few minutes.”
They waited patiently as he studied them, making up his mind. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but something about them bothered him. An uneasiness stirred inside, vague and indefinable. There was an unmistakable sense of purpose about these three. They looked to have come a long way and to have endured some hardship. He felt certain the Borderman’s question had been asked as a matter of courtesy and not to offer a choice.
He smiled affably. He was curious about them in spite of his misgivings. “What do you wish to speak to me about?”
Now the old man took charge, and the Borderman was quick to defer. “We have need of your skills as a smith.”
Urprox kept his smile in place. “I am retired.”
“Kinson says you are the best, that your work is the finest he has ever seen. He would not make that statement if it were not so. He knows a great deal about weapons and the artisans who craft them. Kinson has traveled to a good many places in the Four Lands.”
The Borderman nodded. “I saw the shopkeeper’s sword. I have never seen work like that, not anywhere. You have unique talent.”
Urprox Screl sighed. “Let me save you the trouble of wasting any more of your time. I was good at what I did, but I don’t do it anymore. I was a master smith, but those days are gone. I am retired. I don’t do metalwork of any kind. I don’t do specialty work, and I don’t accept commissions. I do wood carving, and that is all I do.”
The old man nodded, seemingly unfazed. He glanced past Urprox to the wooden bench and the carving that lay there, and asked, “Did you do that? May I have a look?”
Urprox shrugged and handed him the dog. The old man studied it for a long time, turning it over in his hands, tracing the shape of the wood. There was genuine interest in his eyes.
“This is very good,” he said finally, handing it to the girl, who accepted it without comment. “But not as good as your weapons work. Your true skill lies there. In the shaping of metal. Have you been carving wood long?”
“Since I was a child.” Urprox shifted his stance uneasily. “What do you want from me?”
“You must have had a very compelling reason to go back to wood carving after being so successful as a master smith,” the old man pressed, ignoring him.
Urprox felt his temper slip a notch. “I did. I had a very good reason, and I don’t want to talk about it with you.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do, but I am afraid that you must. We need your help, and my task in coming here is to persuade you of that.”
Urprox stared at him, more than a little astonished at his candor. “Well, at least you are honest about your intentions. But now, of course, I am forewarned of them and am prepared to reject any argument you put forth. So you really are wasting your time.”
The old man smiled. “You were already forewarned. You are astute enough to discern that we have traveled some distance to see you and that we must therefore consider you quite important.” The weathered face creased deeper. “Tell me, then. Why did you give it all up? Why did you quit being a smith? Why, when you had been one for so many years?”
Urprox Screl’s brow darkened. “I got tired of it.”
They waited for him to say more, but he refused to do so. The old man pursed his lips. “I think it was probably more than that.”
He paused a moment, and in that moment it seemed to Urprox as if the old man’s eyes turned white, as if they lost their color and their character and became as blank and unreadable as stone. It felt as if the old man was looking right through him.
“You lost heart,” the other said softly. “You are a gentle man with a wife and children, and for all your physical strength yo
u do not like pain. But the weapons you forged were causing pain, and you knew that was happening and you detested it. You grew weary of knowing, and you decided enough was enough. You had money and other talents, so you simply closed your shop and walked away. No one knows this but you and Mina. No one understands. They think you mad. They shun you as they would a disease.”
The eyes cleared and fixed on him anew. “You are an outcast in your own city, and you do not understand why. But the truth is you are a man blessed with unique talent, and everyone who knows you or your work recognizes it and cannot accept that you would waste it so foolishly.”
Urprox Screl felt something cold creep up his spine. “You are entitled to your opinion. But now that you’ve given it, I don’t wish to talk to you anymore. I think you should leave.”
The old man looked off into the darkness, but he did not move from where he stood. The crowds had thinned behind him, and the night had closed about. Urprox Screl suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable. Even this close to familiar surroundings, to people who knew him, and to help if he should need it, he felt completely isolated.
The girl handed back the carving of the dog. Urprox took it from her, looking deep into her great dark eyes, drawn to her in a way he could not explain. There was something in the look she gave him that suggested she understood what he had done. He had not seen that look in anyone’s eyes but Mina’s. It surprised him to find it here, in the eyes of a girl who did not know him at all.
“Who are you?” he asked again, looking from one face to the other.
It was the old man who spoke. “We are the bearers of a charge that transcends all else. We have come a long way to fulfill that charge. Our journey has taken us to many places, and even though you are important to its success, it will not end here. You are but one piece in the puzzle we must assemble. We have need of a sword, Urprox Screl, a sword unlike any other ever forged. It requires the hands of a master smith to shape it. It will have special properties. It is intended not to destroy, but to save. It will be both the hardest and finest work you have ever done or will ever do.”
The big man smiled nervously. “Bold words. But I don’t think I believe them.”
“Because you do not want to forge another weapon in your lifetime. Because you have left all that behind, and the pact you made with yourself will be compromised if you relent now.”
“That states it nicely. I reached an end to that part of my life. I swore I would never go back again. I see no need to change my mind for you.”
“What if I told you,” the old man said thoughtfully, “that you have a chance to save thousands of lives by forging this sword we seek? What if you knew that this was so? Would that change your mind?”
“But it isn’t so,” Urprox insisted stubbornly. “No weapon could achieve that.”
“Suppose that the lives of your wife and children were among those that you would save by forging this sword. Suppose that your refusal to help us would cost them their lives.”
The muscles in the big man’s shoulders bunched. “So my wife and children are in danger now—is that how you wish me to see it? You are indeed desperate if you are reduced to making threats!”
“Suppose I told you that all of this will come to pass within the next few years if you do not help us. All.”
Urprox experienced a whisper of self-doubt. The old man seemed so certain. “Who are you?” he demanded a final time.
The other stepped forward then, coming very close. Urprox Screl could see every seam in his weathered face, every stray hair on his graying head and beard. “My name is Bremen,” the old man answered, his eyes locking on the smith’s. “Do you know of me?”
Urprox nodded slowly. It took every ounce of strength he possessed to hold his ground. “I have heard of you. You are one of the Druids.”
Again, the smile. “Are you frightened by that?”
“No.”
“Of me?”
The big man said nothing, his jaw clenched.
Bremen nodded slowly. “You needn’t be. I would be your friend, though it might seem otherwise. It is not my intention to threaten you. I speak only the truth. There is need for your talent, and that need is real and desperate. It extends the length and breadth of the Four Lands. This is no game we play. We are fighting for the lives of many people, and your wife and children are among them. I do not exaggerate or dissemble when I say that we are all they have left to defend against what threatens.”
Urprox felt his certainty waver anew. “And what exactly is that?”
The old man stepped back. “I will show you.”
His hand rose and brushed at the air before Urprox Screl’s bewildered eyes. The air shimmered and took life. He could see the ruins of a city, the buildings flattened into rubble, the ground steaming and smoking, the air thick with ash and grit. The city was Dechtera. Its people all lay dead in the streets and doorways. What moved through the shadows picking at the bodies was not human, but misshapen and perverse. Something imagined—yet real enough here. Real, and in the vision of Dechtera’s destruction, all that would survive.
The vision vanished. Urprox shuddered as the old man materialized once more, standing before him, eyes hard and set. “Did you see?” he asked quietly. Urprox nodded. “That was the future of your city and its people. That was the future of your family. That was all that remained. But by the time that vision comes to pass, everything north will already be gone. The Elves and the Dwarves will be destroyed. The dark wave that inundated them will have reached here.”
“These are lies!” Urprox spoke the words quickly, out of anger and fear. He did not stop to reason. He was incautious and headstrong in his denial. Mina and his children dead? Everyone he knew gone? It wasn’t possible!
“Harsh truths,” Bremen said quietly. “Not lies.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe any of this!”
“Look at me,” the old man commanded softly. “Look into my eyes. Look deep.”
Urprox Screl did so, unable to do otherwise, compelled to obey. He stared into Bremen’s eyes and watched them turn white once more. He felt himself drawn into a liquid pool that embraced and swallowed him. He could feel himself join with the old man in some inexplicable way, become a part of him, become privy to what he knew. There were flashes of knowledge given in the moments of that joining, truths that he could neither challenge nor avoid. His life was suddenly revealed to him, all that had been and might be, the past and the future come together in a montage of images and glimpses that were so terrifying and so overwhelming that Urprox Screl clutched at himself in despair.
“Don’t!” he whispered, shutting his eyes against what he was seeing. “Don’t show me any more!”
Bremen broke the connection, and Urprox staggered back a step before straightening. The cold that had begun at the base of his spine had now seeped all the way through him. The old man nodded. Their eyes locked. “I am finished with you. You have seen enough to understand that I do not lie. Do not question me further. Accept that my need is genuine. Help me do what I must.”
Urprox nodded, his big hands clenching into fists. The ache in his chest was palpable. “I will listen to what you have to say,” he allowed grudgingly. “That much, at least, I can do.”
But he knew, even as he spoke the words, that he was going to do much more.
So Bremen sat him down on the bench and then took a seat next to him. They became two old friends discussing a business proposition. The Borderman and the girl stood silently before them, listening. On the street beyond, the people of the city passed by unknowing. No one approached. No one even glanced his way. Perhaps they could not even see him anymore, Urprox thought. Perhaps he had been rendered invisible. For as Bremen spoke, he began to recognize how much magic was at work in this business.
Bremen told him first of the Warlock Lord and his invasion of the other lands. The Northland was gone, the Eastland invaded, the Westland at risk. The Southland would be last, and by then,
as the vision had shown, it would be too late for all of them. The Warlock Lord was a creature of magic who had managed to survive beyond mortal life and had summoned creatures of supernatural strength to aid his cause. No ordinary weapon would destroy him. What was needed was the sword that Urprox would forge, a thing of magic as well as iron, a blade that combined the skills and knowledge of both master smith and Druid, of science and magic alike.
“It must be strong in both ways,” Bremen explained. “It must be able to withstand the worst of what will be sent to destroy it, whether iron or magic. The forging must make it as invulnerable as possible, and that will be difficult. Science and magic. You will provide the former, I the latter. But your work is paramount, because if the sword lacks the physical characteristics needed to sustain it, the magic I supply cannot hold.”
“What do you know of forging metals?” Urprox asked, interested now in spite of himself.
“That metals must be combined and tempered just so for the alloy to gain the necessary strength.” Bremen reached into his robes and brought forth the formula that Cogline had supplied. “This is what we will need to achieve the desired result.”
Urprox took the sheet of paper and studied it carefully. He nodded as he read, thinking, Yes, this is the right combination of metals, the proper mix of firings. Then he stopped, smiling broadly. “These temperatures! Have you looked closely at what this mix requires? No one has seen such temperatures in the firing of metal since the old world was destroyed! The furnaces and the formulas alike were lost forever! We haven’t the means to achieve what is asked!”
Bremen nodded calmly. “What heat will your forge withstand? How strong a firing?”
The smith shook his head. “Any amount. Whatever heat we can generate. I built the furnace myself, and it has layered walls of stone and earth to insulate and preserve it. But that is not the problem. The problem is with the fuel. We lack a fuel strong enough to produce the amount of heat this formula requires! You must know that!”
